Path's Latest Update Goes Badly Off Course

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Path's Latest Update Goes Badly Off Course

Path's newest update solves all the wrong problems.

The mobile-only social network that limits you to 150 friends rolled out version three of its app yesterday. It adds several new features, like stickers you can use in conversation, private location sharing, and private messaging. Some of them are quite good, others are boring, and at least one – messaging – is a privacy disaster.

Path’s best feature is it respects your privacy. It’s intimate, and encourages a level of personal sharing in a way rarely seen on Facebook anymore. You can see everyone who viewed your updates. It’s basically impossible to surreptitiously stalk someone. You can’t re-share photos (without taking a screenshot). In its values statement, the company notes, "Path should be private by default. Forever. You should always be in control of your information and experience." This latest update, sadly, breaks that intimacy.

The new messaging feature lets you send one-to-one or group messages. Before, you could only post updates to Path that everyone connected to you could see. Messaging is great, it’s a nice feature. But it screws up, badly, by letting you send messages to people you aren’t friends with. Worse, there’s no way to opt-out of receiving messages. And worst of all, you can use the Search function to find anyone you have a second-degree connection to.

I used the Search feature to find and message Dave Morin, Path’s founder. (He’s not a friend, but I searched for Morin and there he was, twice.) I sent him a message to ask why the new version allowed me to message people who weren’t my friends. His response was that it is “only friends of friends.” That would be great, if I were friends with all of my friends’ friends. I’m not. And I already have a place for that kind of interaction – it’s called Facebook.

I wanted to see who else I could message, and it turns out, I’m connected to quite a few Path founders and funders, like Shawn Fanning, whom you may know better by his old internet handle that he also used as a company name, Napster. I resisted the urge to ask what he was listening to. But by far the worst thing about searching is that you don’t have to know who you are looking for. Hit the letter A and then search, and you’ll get a list of everyone you can message whose first or last name starts with A. Hi, Andrew Anker! How is your new startup going? You can do the same with B, C, and so forth until the bitter end. (Sadly, it appears that either Mark Zuckerberg is not on Path, or at least is not a friend of a friend.) Most people don't need yet another avenue where strangers can message them. Furthermore, people may not even want others knowing they're using the service at all.

These people are not my friends -- at least not on Path.

Path also added a series of stickers, and some other twee stuff you will not care about.

And here’s the thing: I’m a very active Path user. I want it to succeed because I use it so often. I like it. A lot of the people I’m connected to are other journalists, who use it as a place to share thoughts, but in a more private fashion than they can on Facebook or Twitter. I know some high-profile tech-industry people who also use it for similar reasons. But I don’t think that’s its best use case. The thing is, it's also pretty great for families.

Path is too focused on solving Silicon Valley problems. Path revealed to The Next Web that it has 6 million users – that’s small potatoes. And other than stickers and photo filters, it has no source of revenue. (It says paid subscriptions are on the way. But it’s unclear how these will work, or who would subscribe.) On-the-go location sharing and hipster stickers aren’t going to get parents on board. They just want a safe place to share pictures. Messaging is already largely solved – if you’re close enough to someone to be a Path friend, odds are you also have their phone number. Sharing a location in Path versus using Apple Maps and Messages does save about two clicks, but you also have to wait on the Path app, which is often brutally slow to launch and update. There is a voice messaging feature that is quite easy to use, and well done. And there's a one-click button you can use to essentially say "I got your message." It's kind of great too. But again, these seem beside the point.

This update needed to be the one where Path really caught fire and got a network effect rolling. Its best bet to do that is by making a case for privacy, for intimacy, for sharing safely. Path needed a killer update, not another privacy killer.